Open letter to delegates in Montreal 29 November 05

Well done Mark.

I’ll be at the London demonstration on Saturday, & hopefully I can bring along some friends/family.

It struck me that some of the readers of this blog might like to write something for this Essay Competition at Resurgence (see below).

Resurgence and Scientific & Medical Network Essay Competion 2005

‘Can Spiritual Values Combat Global Warming?’

http://www.resurgence.org/essaycompetition/index.htm

For a really powerful, yet uplifting, book about what needs to be done, Jeremy Leggett has just published “Half Gone”.

Peter

Wake up and smell the money! The US gets blasted for not signing Kyoto, being the biggest polluter of GHG’s… (yet Russia and others produce more GHG’s per person), and not willing to tank the economy!!! Yet NO OTHER COUNTRY who actually signed Kyoto has met the goals! (hypocrites- at least Blair was honest)

Now I read that “poorer” countries are demanding to be PAID not to deforest as the rainforests provide a service to the world… OH BROTHER!! I’ve read it all now! Let’s blackmail the world into paying to keep the trees.

I’ve got an idea. All the treehuggers can go down there and stand between the rainforest trees and chainsaws. (like the “human shields” of Iraq) They can put a stop to the deforestation and blackmail!

This takes the cake!! The US gets lambasted for having a strong economy and the South American countries get to plunder the rest of the world because they have large rainforests and too stupid to do anything else but cut down trees and burn them. Makes sense now. I see how this works…

Developing countries: pay us to save rainforests Rhett A. Butler, mongabay.com November 27, 2005

At this week’s United Nations summit on climate change in Montreal a coalition of tropical developing countries plans to propose that wealthy countries pay them to preserve their rainforests. The group of 10 countries, led by Papua New Guinea and Costa Rica, will argue that they should be compensated for the services rainforests provide the rest of the world.

http://news.mongabay.com/2005/1127-rainforests.html

Post-Kyoto deal may fail, warns Beckett By Andy McSmith Published: 28 November 2005

Her warning echoes a speech earlier this month by Tony Blair, who dampened the hopes of environmentalists by delivering what he called the “blunt truth” – that no government will “sacrifice” economic growth for the sake of reducing global warning.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article329711.ece

Have you lost it completely? You won’t convince anyone with shouting and unsupported assertions.

Douglas Coker

Here’s the support… other articles found like it too… my posting had links in it so what was unsupported? The fact some third worlds are trying to extort the world for their trees? We are already being extorted by OPEC now it’s the oxygen supply next….

(and for your next attack, yes they were cut and pasted)

US Blasted

Kyoto not an option, U.S. says at summit By Beth Duff-Brown Associated Press

MONTREAL – The United States defended its decision not to sign the Kyoto Protocol on Monday, saying during the opening of a global summit on climate change that it is doing more than most countries to protect the Earth’s atmosphere.

The 10-day U.N. Climate Control Conference is considered the most important gathering on global warming since Kyoto, bringing together thousands of experts from 180 nations to brainstorm on ways to slow the effects of greenhouses gases.

Leading environmental groups spent the first hours of the conference blasting Washington for not signing the landmark 1997 agreement that sets targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions around the world.

http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/journalgazette/news/nation/13282233.htm

Climate change: It’s now or never In an open letter to delegates at the Montreal environmental summit, beginning today, campaigner Mark Lynas explains why action on climate change can no longer be stalled Published: 28 November 2005

BOYCOTT AMERICA

Having refused to ratify Kyoto, America will be officially exiled to the sidelines in Montreal, giving it much less power to subvert and undermine the negotiations than has been the case in past years. But expect to see representatives from the American delegation huddled in corners with the Chinese and Indians, gently urging them not to agree to European suggestions that it is now time for developing countries to consider taking on their own post-Kyoto targets.

Don’t listen to them. Instead, <u>give the Americans an ultimatum</u>: either they agree to rejoin the Kyoto process and cut their own emissions or face ostracism from the world community. Countries that have taken on emissions cuts can’t afford to see their efforts undermined by free-riders like the US, so it’s time to consider economic and trade sanctions if the US won’t play fair. This also goes for Australia, which follows America’s lead on global warming.

PLAYING FAIR? Sitting on a pretty high horse for not living up to what was signed. At least the US was honest in admitting Kyoto would not work… and it hasn’t.

Name one country besides Japan who has met their Kyoto goals? Last search I did couldn’t come up with any. IF they were some they would be trumpeted as the model of success!

Name one country with the standard of living and cost of living as the US who has met Kyoto goals?

Kyoto aside, the USA is very high on per capita emission rates as compared to other industrialized countries.

If the USA reduced per capita emissions down to the current UK level, then it would be equivalent to the UK reducing to zero emissions four times.

If the USA reduced per capita emissions down to the current EU level, then it would be equivalent to the EU reducing their emissions by 75 percent.

I use per capita emissions because these are emissions per person which factor out population.

Interestingly, Kyoto did not ask the USA to reduce as much. And this does not include emissions from our manufactured goods from China. These products have embedded energy and emissions yet still support our lifestyle.

I think this adds another dimension to comparing USA emission rates with other countries.

Dan

You are a joke!!!!

What a typical response from you…Are you sure you don’t work for the White House!

Developing Countries are NOT ‘too stupid to do anything else but cut down trees and burn them.’ It is the developed world, specifically the US and Europe, that ends up buying the majority of the illigally cut wood or demands cheap food for cattle that forces the poor of the world to cut down the trees to open up farm land! Maybe if the west cuts back on it’s extremely decadent lifestyle the forests wouldn’t need to be cut down to such an extent and then we wouldn’t have to pay these countries to stop destroying their forests.

I think we should all support this idea as we all benefit from saving the forests of the world.

Well done Mark on this letter, I hope the powers that be take heed before it is too late (if it isn’t alredy)!

China’s deputy environment minister interviewed over at Open Democracy http://www.opendemocracy.net/content/articles/PDF/2407.pdf Made my hair stand on end!

Douglas Coker

I don’t know how you expect the Earth to survive with your viewpoints. You are on a different planet to the rest of us.

You probably are aware that most of the reduction in carbon dioxide emissions in Germany occurred after the collapse of the Soviet Union and re-unification of East and West Germany. The upgrading and replacement of the Stone Age technology in use in East Germany by modern, efficient equipment caused carbon dioxide emissions to fall by 16.5% in the first 3 years following re-unification. The trend since has been slightly downward, mainly because of the continuing economic slump in Germany.

The carbon dioxide emissions from British industry fell largely as British industry switched from coal to the North Sea natural gas fields for fuel. British emissions fell by about 4% between 1990 and 1994 and have been stable since.

French emissions began falling in the 1970s as the French turned to nuclear technology to generate electric power. The French have the lowest per capita emission rate because so much of their electric generation is nuclear. French emissions have not changed much since 1990.

It seems to me that the more radical posters have decided that the only way to assuage the gods of warming is through contrition and contraction, which I see as another way of saying dismantle modern technology and return to those good old days of yesteryear. Unfortunately, those good old days never existed. Life on the planet is better than it has ever been before and is improving. We can blame the improvement in the human condition on advancements in modern technology.

It is folly to think that humans will close the doors to all of the existing means of generating energy that have any hope of providing the energy that we need to maintain, enhance and spread the wealth to the underdeveloped portions of the world. It is not going to happen; we are not going to close those doors. The best we can do is to make realistic estimates of the extent of future warming, realistic estimates of the effects of that warming and prepare to deal with the probable effects.

We have not begun that process yet. We are still in the stage of hysterical overstatement of the probable extent of warming and ranting about infamously ludicrous predictions of the dire (imaginary) future consequences of the mythical future warmth.

Sorry to disappoint but Canada is the main exporter of lumber to the US with 20 billion board feet. European Countries are next with 1.3 billion board feet and then the Southern Hemisphere is next with 1.2 billion board feet.

http://www.woodmarkets.com/2005%20NL%202%20pager/Mar05%202pg.pdf

Frankly, much our US lumber is wasted on the annual park fires as millions of acres have burned because the environemntalists have lobbied Washington so much we can’t access the lumber anymore. They prefer to watch it burn rather than let companied manage it and let the US markets use it for building and production. Many of these forests were once prairie and grasslands but have since grown up into forests over the past hundred years. Yup, makes a lot of sense to watch it all burn each summer and spend millions of dollars trying to put out the fires rather than clear cut, manage, harvest and actually make some profit from the wood.

As far as cattle feed, it’s not coming from the crops where there were former rain forests. It’s coming from corn and other not so pleasant things in the US.

http://www.cattletoday.com/archive/2005/October/CT421.shtml http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2003-06-09-beef-cover_x.htm

Apparently a lot of the wood cleared out is sold as plywood to the EU and other european and asian countries. It is actually competing with US exports of the same product.

http://www.fas.usda.gov/ffpd/wood-circulars/dec2000/brazil_chile.pdf

I was wrong. They aren’t too stupid but are profiting from the wood being cut and selling it to europe. I stand corrected. Hopefully, they will be smart enough to replant trees to have for future crops. I can’t see paying them to keep them though. Every country can plant their own tree if they want to rather than paying a couple of countries to keep theirs.

Crikey, man. Where do you get your info? Scary. Plus, the point of Shawn’s post was tropical wood, not CDN softwood, a point you made yourself, which oddly has morphed into CDN softwood.

Anyway, the forests are burning because that’s what they do, and because of our previous poor management policy of putting out every fire (which resulted in a surplus of biomass). Forests burn. That’s what they do. Fire is part of the ecosystem. Forests burn. That’s what they do. The key is that the Fire Return Interval for each forest type is different. Some Pondo forests have a FRI of 5-25 years. Some Red Fir have a FRI of 250 years. Preventing fire for 100 years in a Pondo forests means a buildup of material.

Forests burn. That’s what they do.

The reason why th’ ding-dang virnmintulists lobbied Washington is because of the poor care shown the public forests (come out to Western WA and we’ll walk around some old clearcuts that haven’t regrown). When the auto became popular after WWII and roads were widely built, folk started driving to the woods, and reported back to their congresscritters about the horrible care they saw. Their concern turned into action.

If you gather some coherent facts, I’d be happy to discuss them with you at length, as one of my degrees is in a specialized branch of forestry. We can discuss the logging practices in the US and CDN post-WWII.

Best,

D

Sorry – just noticed what I wrote about the UK doesn’t make much sense. I meant to say that the UK’s GHG emissions from industry have been coming down quite steadily since 1990, but overall emissions stopped falling pretty much at the same time as fuel duty got frozen, air traffic expansion set off and the government went mad about building new roads. And of course some shift from gas to coal for domestic use is also an issue just now.

Almuth

The French decided to begin installing nuclear power generators in 1973, and over the next 15 years installed 56 reactors (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/readings/french.html). They now operate 58 reactors that provide about 75% of all of their electricity needs. They even export power to neighboring countries and may be partially responsible for reductions in carbon dioxide emissions in Germany.

If you look at the trend of French carbon dioxide emissions (http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/trends/emis/fra.htm), you will see that they begin decreasing in the early 1970s and that after 1993 the emissions level off or even begin a small increase. The decrease in emissions parallels the construction of nuclear power plants.

You apparently agree with me that the primary reason that German carbon dioxide emissions have decreased since 1990 is the replacement of the inefficient East German fuel burning equipment after the fall of the Russian Empire. You apparently are under the impression that the replacement occurred overnight, but that cannot be true. It took time to replace all of that equipment; the replacement occurred over a period several years and may still be ongoing to some extent. German emissions of carbon dioxide level off after about 1995.

Great Britain began increasing its production and consumption of natural gas about 1988, use of gas increased through the late 1990s. Natural gas replaced coal and to some extent, liquid fuels for electricity generation and the substitution reduced carbon dioxide emissions. Gas production may peak soon and we may begin seeing an increase in carbon dioxide emissions in Great Britain.

I do not believe that you can characterize the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment as the consensus of 1,300 scientists any more than you can claim that there is a consensus among the 2,000 scientists who have provided input to the IPCC climate assessment reports. If you will look at the list of authors of the MEA, you will see names like Robert Watson, and David Suzuki among the prominent authors. Why would you expect the tenor of the text to be anything other than strident?

That is not to say that I believe that man has had no impact on the environment and climate; I agree that we have. I also believe that the doomsday projections forecast by scientists in other fields, agronomy, ecology, etc. mostly are predicated on the worst case of the IPCC climate projections. Look at the temperature vs. time chart in the MEA (if you have not, you can download the MEA from http://www.millenniumassessment.org/en/products.aspx.). You will see that the IPCC storylines result in projected temperature increases that vary from about 1.6- up to about 5.5-Celsius degrees. The mid point and most likely temperature increase projections are around 2.5 degrees temperature rise.

Is it not true that most of the doomsday predictions begin with a statement about a temperature increase up to 5.5 degrees? Do those who predict disaster not make their projections on the basis of the higher IPCC projections? It seems to me that they do. I say that does not lead to a rational assessment of our options. I say that leads to needless and useless hysteria.

because the soil conditions in many rain forests with their delicate ecosystems prevent replanting of any trees.

So, for these forests, only a one time harvest followed by devastation can happen. Rain forests create their own mini climate and this would be compromised from harvesting. So, it is most prudent to leave certain tropical rain forest regions alone.

What mechanism is used to accomplish this may be less relevant than the need to save them.

Dan

My point was that the US gets wood from Canada primarily NOT South America as he was saying. I don’t remember reading the word tropical anywhere in the posting.

My point was forest management would prevent needless burning by cutting breaks and thinning the trees. This is something that is not done in the areas which have burned.

A far as the northern US goes… the areas you spoke of being clear cut didn’t have the trees replanted or was freshly cut. I could take you through parts of Alaska I saw when I was there which in the early part of the 1900’s had been clear cut and replanted. They are now a thick forest with 100+ foot trees. Unfortunately, now they can’t be cut thanks to environmentalist lobbying changing the laws for these forests. What a waste of wood…

Oh we’d also walk past the lumber mills which were closed thaks to the lobbying as well. I’m sure we’d run into many people who also are out of work becuse of the mills closing also.

Lumber companies want to cut down trees but they also understand that if they aren’t replanted then they will have a limited business income. Yes, a fresh clear cut looks dramatically different than a mature forest but you also need to remember it once looked like that before the trees grew there in the first place.

It must be nice to know everything, up on that high horse, and whip out a degree for every little niche area… climatology and now forestry… what’s next nuclear physics? Careful you don’t fall.

I don’t remember reading the word tropical anywhere in the posting.

The topic was tropical wood. I’m sorry you didn’t understand the topic. Your clues were ‘illegally cut wood’, ‘poor’, ‘cattle’. Having knowledge on a subject allows one to speak to it.

My point was forest management would prevent needless burning by cutting breaks and thinning the trees. This is something that is not done in the areas which have burned.

Because small caliper stems are not merchantable timber. Create a market for small stems and the trees’ll get cut.

I’m sure we’d run into many people who also are out of work becuse of the mills closing also.

We’ll run into more due to technology eliminating human input, and running out of wood around mills.

Yes, a fresh clear cut looks dramatically different than a mature forest but you also need to remember it once looked like that before the trees grew there in the first place.

No it didn’t. Unless you are speaking of immediately after glaciation ended, in which case you are implying the harvest action is a catastrophic disturbance, for which most forests are poorly adapted – hence, the managment technique is a poor one. [BTW, the third rotation around here, and all the loggers I know also knows this, ensures the soil is depleted]

it must be nice to know everything, up on that high horse, and whip out a degree for every little niche area… climatology and now forestry… what’s next nuclear physics? Careful you don’t fall.

You’ll notice I comment on a narrow range of issues, and don’t pretend I know something outside of that range, such as nukyoolur physics. You might try it sometime.

Best,

D